Presenter Miranda Ji (Destination Greater Victoria) introduced 2025 SITE Global Conference attendees to the concept of “touristship” during one of this year’s breakout sessions.
Pioneered by Chieko Tanaka, a Japanese scholar and Representative Director of the General Incorporated Association of Touristship, Miranda walked breakout attendees through her personal discovery of the concept during a family trip to Kyoto.
Kyoto is where Chieko launched the academic and observational work that underpins our understanding of “touristship,” Miranda explained, pointing to the formation of a nonprofit organization in 2019 to promote the concept around the city and Chieko’s appointment as a Kyoto City Tourism Ambassador in 2022.
Loosely defined, Miranda said, “touristship” is when visitors adapt a mindset of wanting to proactively consider, contribute, and communicate with the destination.
She then provided examples of the kinds of behvaiors and responsibilities that fall under each of these categories, including:
- Consider: conducting general research about where you’re going; strategizing and planning smart times to travel or move around the destination to avoid stressing systems or inconveniencing locals on stricter schedules; staying mindful of your environmental footprint and minimizing waste
- Contribution: understanding cultures and traditions where you’re visiting to help shape positive attitudes toward residents and the destination; supporting local businesses to give back economically
- Communication: don’t just interact with the scenery — embrace opportunities to connect with locals, too!
While Chieko Tanaka originally created the touristship framework through a wider leisure and more general travel lens, Miranda offered up several ways for incentive professionals to adapt this work and take touristship into consideration when planning incentive travel rewards.
Starting at the DMO level, Miranda pointed to the growing number of impact and legacy programs offered by DMO teams, including her own work with Business Events Victoria.
Oftentimes, she said, these programs will partner and help vet local nonprofit or give-back partners, that incentive organizers can then tap to instantly boost the local community level-impacts and touristship-friendly elements of their programs.
Simply making sensitive and strategic programming choices when building out your group’s program design can also go a long way, Miranda added — giving examples specific to this year’s Global Conference host destination like refraining from using undeveloped lands for activities; understanding drone restrictions for photo & video teams; and staying mindful of water use in an area that can be impacted by shortages.
Miranda closed out the session by encouraging attendees to share their takeaways on postcards that will be sent back to Chieko: a nice nod to SITE’s aim of continuing to bridge cultures across destination and continue building positive working relationships with tourism professionals around the world.
Thank you to Miranda, and to all of our 2025 SITE Global Conference presenters, for sharing their industry knowledge with us!
